Cinematics & Virtual Production package deprecation in Unity 6.1

Unity Engine
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Hello everyone.

I am the Product Manager for many packages covering cinematic tooling

As of Unity 6.1 we are deprecating a number of packages related to live/virtual productions and broadcast/cinema, as we renew our focus (as much as possible) on core games functionality

What is being deprecated

The following packages are being deprecated:

  • Cinematic Studio Feature Set
  • Cinematic Studio Sample
  • Sequences
  • Python for Unity
  • Live Capture, and the Virtual Camera & Face Capture Companion Apps

Deprecation means the package is available but will no longer be supported, IE we will not be fixing bugs or ensuring compatibility with a given version of Unity.

It also means that at some point in the future, it will likely no longer be available, and be removed completely from the Package Manager.

Please note, While we have open sourced Live Capture GitHub - Unity-Technologies/UnityLiveCapture: Unity Live Capture package and companion apps (Face Capture and Virtual Camera)., we currently have no open source plans for the other packages, nor plans for providing alternative functionality or replacements.

What’s not being deprecated

We know there are still a number of packages related to cinematics, which will not be deprecated in Unity 6.1. These are:

  • Cinemachine
  • Recorder
  • Alembic
  • FBX Exporter
  • FBX SDK

Why are we deprecating these packages?

We have a huge number of packages, tooling and code that we maintain, but we also have finite resourcing.

It is always a difficult decision to deprecate packages or functionality in Unity, knowing that some of you have relied upon it in some form for your projects, and we would ideally love to be all things to all people, but that is unrealistic.

However, we do want to make sure the packages we continue to invest in are stable, and ready for production. In order to achieve that, we are reducing our investment elsewhere.

Chinny

Senior Product Manager - Unity

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Sad to see the Python package go, as it had huge potential outside of cinematic tooling. There’s a lot of stuff out there that’s written in Python, and a way to just run a python script from the editor without going through Process.Start or other clunk was nice. Especially for studios that run several different operating systems, having out of the box python from the editor was a nice offering.

Not sad to see the other stuff go, that was for sure the wrong direction for Unity, and I’m glad resouces can be spent in better places.

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I dont mind if those packages dont get maintained. But please dont remove them and please dont remove the apps. We have a number of workflows in our game development pipeline that relies on Face Capture and Live Capture apps/packages.

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More reasons for such studios to use Unreal. Although I am not sure if any studios preferred Unity for such tasks. Unity never took it seriously. These features seemed more like party tricks to present at Unite and claim you were getting into that market…

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Honestly yeah. I’m kind of glad it’s being deprecated since using Unity for virtual production is just worse than Unreal by comparison. It sells an experience that doesn’t really exist in Unity’s current state. Doing this reduces the scope of things Unity has to pretend to seriously support, and lets them focus on what people actually use Unity for, ie. Games.

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Glad that cinemachine doesn’t get tossed in this ressource reallocation.

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Virtual Camera and such still has a ton of use for games, same with face capture.

While focusing on games is important, a lot of games is also cinematics! Cinemachine is extremely valuable, along with recorder (which really needs HDR support for URP btw). Some game types can be entirely made with timeline, cinemachine, sequences, and other tools.

That said the iPhone limitation of Virtual Camera is why I’m not using it currently. I had plans to get an iPad for this purpose but instead I aim to use a Meta Quest Headset.

Point is good cinematic tools are still extremely valuable for games!

I hope some of these see new forms in the future, with a more unified approach!

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If you do any kind of toon or anime styled work Unity would be ideal really.

For me personally I had plans to focus on some raw cinematic uses, cause customizing the rendering on Unity is just easier to do.

But for the film industry I can see Unreal being much better here, as there’s much more focus and some higher fidelity tools at no additional cost (unlike Ziva).

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Probably an unpopular opinion but I think this is a really good move. Other engines are starting to stray from their gaming focus into virtual production and other non gaming inititives, and its hurting them badly. It’s nice to see a game engine that actually focuses on gaming.

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Cinemachine is an extremely valuable tool that saves a ton of work, so I am happy it stays

The rest, are not really needed for the scope of the vast majority of Unity projects

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It is not hurting them badly at all. Finally, antiquated industries like AEC are changing and becoming real time. Engines expanding their influence and getting into new markets is not hurting them at all. Markets that actually pay to use your tools. Brings in millions. :smiley:

tbh, Unity wasted a lot of money buying some influential companies (Monarch, Weta FX, Ziva) but barely tried and failed to get into movies and broadcast, while others have been super successful and dominated some of them (advertising, broadcast, VFX).

Even where they are significantly more successful than broadcast, i.e. AEC, their competitors have a strong presence due to key tech workflow moves. i.e. on top of their superior lighting and nanite, supporting Vray shaders was a masterful move by Unreal, and even though Unity at some point came close to Autodesk, this relation has weakened, and it appears Autodesk is now more keen to work with Unreal.

The one leading Epic’s AEC efforts, Ken Pimentel was leading 3dsmax for years. The industry standard tool for photorealistic Archviz, Product Viz, and even a strong VFX and games presence. He has all the connections in the world with the industry and knows exactly what they want. Who did Unity hire for this role? Their name is not even mentioned. If Unity didn’t have a strong XR grip they would not even be in AEC.

Unity is a great tool for cartoon animation really, but because their competitors know what to do to gain the trust of animation studios, they do better.

As for Cinemachine… it is still helpful until those who took over ruin it. Adam who was pushed out while his product was given to random people, is now starting a new smart camera tool for Unreal…

And ditching Sequences… not a great idea. The people who will be pissed off it got removed are NOT represented in the community. Is there a replacement alternative?

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Cinemachine was not given to random people. The same coding team is still on it - no change since 2017. We do miss Adam and wish him the best with his new project.

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The same coding team is not the same as a product lead with a vision.
Nothing good can come out of a public discussion about it anyway.

People can draw their own conclusions and form their own opinions by seeing what happened to Cinemachine in v3.0

I just wish packages had ratings.

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I mean for me CM3 is a massive improvement to the code base…

And I managed to upgrade my entire project from CM2.

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Of that I am certain. I have no doubt it is better from a programming point of view. Giving it more control to coders with the ability to extend it.

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Utterly stupid decision from Unity. Sorry to hear this as it really hurts Unity.
I can understand that Unity couldn’t compete with Unreal marketing. But as a person that works for years in Virtual Production, I still think that Unity is a better solution for VP than Unreal. It is extensible and easily so. Unreal has a lot of problems, a primary that it requires recompilation of engine for any custom work and that it’s has a incredibly bad rendering when a camera moves fast (due to everything being temporal). Unreal has taken a high cost production, but Unity had a potential to take an indie market (youtubers and streamers).
And no, development for this indie sector isn’t of some extreme cost. I have been doing it in my spare time, and my own resources, and made some assets like Deckard Render and Deckard Chromakey, that are much better for VP than any tool developed by Unreal. (and I’m not able to make it for unreal as it would be extremely complex work due to non extensibility of Unreal). And I have also used these tools for actual production.
It’s all about defining what can be done and on what level. VP is a viable option, but if Unity lacks a vision for it… then it becomes ‘unnecessary’ burden. And it’s pretty sad to hear this.
Also, a VP tools can and should be used for cut sequences and for promotion purposes. They are essential.
Other than that, why are existing tools not being made open source? I don’t see any reason for that other than a simple and utterly stupid burocratic mindset.

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Last time I checked both client applications and the Unity Package (Live View) were open-sourced on github (under the Unity Companion License, which basically exists just to prevent competing engines from using it verbatim in their sw and protects unity from liability).

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Not a big VP user, but it seems to me that VP was like 80% Timeline + Cinemachine, and these tools are not going anywhere, so not much has changed. They will still be updated and expanded.
Just wish Unity would give Timeline a UTK overhaul.

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